


who's gonna save a little warmth for me

by apatternedfever



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sirens, Canonical Character Not-Death, Hard of Hearing Steve Rogers, M/M, Period-Typical Internalized Homophobia, Siren Bucky, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:05:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apatternedfever/pseuds/apatternedfever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>That's the first thing Bucky is to him: blood on his knuckles and that smile he had after they were both standing, easy and warm.</i> When Bucky sings, the world falls in love. Steve loves him whether or not he's singing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who's gonna save a little warmth for me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [your voice is a weapon (but you sing anyway)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3296981) by [lostinthefire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostinthefire/pseuds/lostinthefire). 



> Set in more or less the same universe as _your voice is a weapon_ , just from Steve's point of view instead on Bucky's. And covering the time period of more or less the first chapter (through the end of Cap 1). Many thanks to lostinthefire for letting me write it. Or many complaints at them for talking me into writing it. One of the two.
> 
> Not beta read, so if you spot any issues, please point them out.

The first time Steve meets Bucky Barnes, his ears are ringing and his vision is hazy, and he doesn't really see or hear him at all at first. He's lying on the ground, choking on his own spit and hoping without any real hope that there's no blood in it, and he's convinced himself he can get up one more time. He's sure he can, if the world will just stop spinning around him; he's come back from worse.

He barely notices the footsteps moving towards them, or when they stop. When he manages to crack open his eyes, there's another boy who wasn't there a minute ago, hands held up like he's showing they're empty. Steve thinks his mouth is moving, but he can't really focus on it enough to try and make out the sounds; he tries to suck in a breath for a warning, and ends up coughing all over again.

Turns out he didn't really need to, because the boy takes another couple of small steps forward, and then pulls back one empty hand and punches. The bully doesn't even try to move away, just takes the hit, stands there for a few dumbstruck moments with his back to Steve before he runs without looking back.

Steve closes his eyes again and tries really hard to be grateful instead of annoyed, because his ma's talked to him about stubbornness and how he has to learn to accept help. "Thanks," he manages to get out, before another cough rattles him and yeah, that's blood on the ground in front of him.

The boy crouches down in front of him, his mouth still moving, but between the ringing still in Steve's ears and his hearing, he can't make it out. After a second and no answer, the boy offers a hand; he's been cut, probably on the bully's tooth, and Steve grits his teeth and listens to his ma's voice ringing in his head, 'you can't do _everything_ alone', and takes the hand up.

That's the first thing Bucky is to him: blood on his knuckles and that smile he had after they were both standing, easy and warm.

*

The first time Steve hears Bucky sing -- well, the first time, he doesn't really hear it at all, because Bucky sits himself down on his bad side (not that Steve has much of a good side) and immediately starts trying to talk Steve into going swimming. It's getting cold out, though, and Steve's already starting to feel it, so he shakes his head, tells Bucky to go on without him. All his excuses are embarrassing, so he doesn't try and give them; just focuses on his book and tries to ignore the sick feeling telling him that this first no is the end.

Steve doesn't have any other friends, and he's not sure what the rules are; he's been going along with whatever Bucky suggests since that first meeting blurred into an afternoon which blurred into a friendship, but he thinks of how bad things got last winter, and he knows he can't say yes, either.

The park's crowded around their bench; it floods in to fill the silence when Bucky finally stops trying to coax him, and Steve half figures he's left for a full minute, maybe even two. The crowd's babble dies off for a second and the sound of Bucky's voice finally hits him, very soft under the noise of the people around them, and almost --

Steve snaps his head up to look at Bucky, who is singing, or at least was, and his voice dies away when Steve squints at him, frowning. 

"What'd you say?" Steve asks, and Bucky's eyes get big for a second, before he shakes his head.

"Nothin'," he says, "nevermind." And he knows it's not nothing, but Bucky smiles and doesn't look mad that Steve's not going with him, so he lets this one go without asking.

*

They grow up. It's not that things change, so much as they expand. They get bigger -- well, Steve gets bigger to a point, and then his body seems to stop bothering -- and the world gets bigger around them.

Bucky is: blood on his knuckles; charm and warmth in his smile; humming low when the world's quiet enough that even Steve's shitty ears can pick up on it; opening the windows in the rain; the way his mouth moves when he's singing; steady heartbeat to lean against when Steve can't do anything but fall over; glazed eyes and eager nods from everyone around him; the ocean rushing over their ankles; the itchy press of couch cushions under his back where his shirt's coming up; half-asleep in church and watching people watch him sing; holding Steve upright against the crash of a wave and laughing; never saying no, but always shifting, restless, while Steve draws him; sweeping girls around dark dance floors; and always water, any kind of water he can get.

*

They grow up in each other's pockets, joined at the hip, looking like brothers -- phrases thrown at them sometimes like compliments and sometimes like they're a puzzle. Steve knows how it looks: like opposites coming together. Around other people, Bucky's nothing but easy, a smile and a song on his lips; everybody's a little in love with him, and they would be whether he was helping them out or robbing them blind. And Steve, well, he never stops fighting because he never can; because the minute he stops, his body's going to cave in on itself. He's held together by sheer stubbornness and some kind of spark under his skin, the one that never lets him settle, never lets him rest, never lets him give up.

But Bucky isn't all smooth and simple, either; he's not just charm and cheer. He pulls people in like an undertow, and there's things in him that even Steve doesn't understand; sometimes Steve thinks he's got just as much fight in him as Steve ever has, but he doesn't have the world and his own body to rail against. Maybe that's why he stays with tiny, half-dead Steve: because pulling his ass out of the fire gives Bucky a chance to really _fight_ a battle once in a while, instead of smoothing everything over.

He's not sure; even after most of their lives spent at each other's sides, there's parts of Bucky that Steve's pretty sure he's never going to see.

*

Bucky sings, and the world listens.

It's more than charm and it's more than anything Steve has a name for and it's normal, how it's always been. Bucky sings, and people fall all over themselves for him, to give him what he wants or what they think he might want. Bucky sings, and the world falls in love.

Steve loves him, in every way imaginable: like a brother, when Bucky picks him up out of the dust or argues him into taking the medicine he won't say how he got; like a best friend, when they scuffle and scowl at each other like there aren't smiles threatening to break out of the corner of their mouths; in ways that are immoral and illegal and probably not as well-hidden as he'd like to think, when Bucky swaggers away from a girl looking rumpled and smug. Steve loves him whether he's singing or not, but he looks at the dazed faces around them when Bucky lets out a song and he wonders --

It's something he can't bring up after years of the same dazed faces and quiet songs. He starts putting Bucky on the side with his worse ear without thinking about it, and he swallows _do you ever notice_ or _do I ever_ every time it threatens to come forward, and the world goes on listening.

*

Bucky is _everything_ , especially once Steve's ma dies and he doesn't have much of anything else in his life, but most of all: he's a _fucking fish_ , shouted laughing after him when he swims past where Steve's body will let him go, and he's the face he makes when Steve tells him _not_ to sing.

He's so sick he's not sure that he's not hallucinating Bucky there when he stumbles out of bed, so sick he's not sure this isn't the end -- that, knowing they're not going to make it another five years, his body's giving up on him here and now. Steve pitches onto Bucky's chest, curls up on him like a kid despite knowing full well he's too old and, surprisingly, a little too big to do this anymore.

"Sorry. Hurts," he says after falling onto Bucky, and that's as much as he's going to be able to say. He can't make himself say that he's scared, or that he doesn't want to die alone in bed; he can't find a way to explain that just lying there feels like he's giving up and waiting for the angels that doesn't sound stubborn and stupid even to his own ears. He doesn't try, doesn't have the breath to do it even if he wanted to give it a shot, so he says, "Could use a little help thinking about something else."

Bucky's got his arms wrapped around him like he doesn't notice that they're both grown men and there's no good reason for Steve to be on his lap like this, and he pauses before he takes in a breath, deep and slow. Steve can feel his chest expanding underneath him. He's distracted by that, and he only realizes what Bucky's doing when the first note hits his ears.

" _No._ " It'd be a shout if he had enough strength for it, and he scrambles to sit up before pitching over again, just avoiding falling off the couch entirely when Bucky tightens his arms and pulls Steve down against him. "No, not that, just--"

And how can he explain now, when he's kept every comment about the blank faces that greet Bucky's songs to himself? He can't say how they look too much like corpses right now; how easy it'd be to drift off surrounded by Bucky's heartbeat and Bucky singing, glazed and soft, and he doesn't want to die that way, doesn't want to give up fighting with Bucky there to see it. It's irrational, and he knows -- would know, anyway, if he wasn't sick; should know -- that Bucky's not going to sing him off to an eternal sleep, but Steve can't convince himself of that, and he shakes his head against Bucky's chest.

"Don't sing. Just talk to me," he suggests instead, looking up, and he can't read Bucky's expression at all, isn't always the best at it when he's not half out of his mind. (That's a lie: he's the best at it, he's proud of that, but that doesn't mean he can do it as well as he should, as he wants to, as Bucky can read him.)

"Okay," Bucky says, and he only pauses for a second, but even that's a second too long, enough to make Steve wonder if he's really there at all, if his burning body's lying to him about being on top of someone else after all.

"Tell me about work," Steve suggests, even though he's heard just about everything there is to say.

"Okay," Bucky says again, and launches into a story Steve heard just the day before, when they thought the fever was breaking and laughed until they cried about things that weren't really funny at all out of relief.

Steve does fall asleep, between Bucky's heartbeat and Bucky's voice, but it's not easy or slack or comfortable, and he wakes up again to the fever having broken, his body going up against his brain and Bucky's voice and losing one more time.

*

They take Bucky away to war, and Steve, standing lost on the edge of having to be alone for the first time since six, almost asks him if he'll sing to the recruiters, if he can convince them that Steve needs to come too.

He finds his own way instead.

*

War changes everything. War changes Steve, and once he's gotten him back, it looks like war's changed Bucky too.

He tells himself the war can change them, but it won't change _them_ , not the way they are together, not the way they help each other, react to each other, treat each other.

He almost convinces himself, too, but then there's one night -- the Howling Commandos are in enemy territory, and they're trying to be quiet about it, but the guy who finds them is too far to do anything but shoot and a gun will draw someone else down on them sure as shit. And Steve almost panics himself, but his team knows exactly what to do.

Dum-Dum nudges Bucky, who nods. One by one they cover their ears, except for Steve, who knows what's going to happen but doesn't think about the way things have changed, who just turns his worse ear towards Bucky, feet away and bound to be quiet in this place, and watches the shape his mouth starts to take--

When he blinks himself awake, he's got Gabe holding onto his shoulders, half shaking him out of it and half holding him back. The guy -- the _kid_ , fuck -- that found them is bleeding on the ground, and Bucky's got a bloody knife in his hand and an unreadable expression when he looks up at Steve.

That, at least, is familiar.

*

Bucky starts to lose his grip, and Steve _wants_ him to sing, wants him to tell Steve's body to do things that Steve's stubborn, stupid brain won't let him do fast enough. Wants to dislocate his shoulders until he can reach far enough, wants to let go so he can catch Bucky around the waist and maybe, somehow, slow the fall, give him a cushion, just be there _with him_ \--

But Bucky doesn't sing when he falls, he screams, and Steve's ears ring with it for a long time, blocking out everything else.

*

There's a part of Steve's brain that's still ringing with Bucky's last scream, joined now by Peggy's sobs, when the plane touches the water.

He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see anything as it happens -- one moment of cowardice here at the end, when people have been begging him to learn to be a little less brave for years. Takes his last few breaths as steady as he can, before the water and the glass come rushing over him. It's almost cold enough to burn, like a fever all over again, and he thinks of Bucky, wrapped around him, a lifetime and only a couple of years ago.

"Sing something," he says this time, hazily aware he's not saying or hearing anything at all. He holds onto the memory as if concentrating hard enough will bring him back there, and the last thing he hears is Bucky singing, loud enough to drown out the screaming and the cold.


End file.
